Stone Hawthorne (stones_throw) wrote in morningstar_mnr, @ 2009-06-05 00:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | lara, stone |
Thursday Night, Hawthorne Apartment, Stone & Lara
Stone was cooking. Again. At this point this was not odd. He was nervous about the bid he put on the building next to his and so he'd left the store in Alyssa's hands for the day around lunch time and had gone on a grocery shopping spree. After lugging everything back and up to his apartment, he'd texted Lara to see if she wanted to come over for dinner and then he'd started cooking. He started with what he wanted to make for drinks. Since his dinner was somewhat Spanish themed, he decided to go with making sangria. So he popped his iPod down into its little iHome and started a playlist while Slate lurked around, following him at his feet and legs for and possible spills to clean up. Once the music was going he dug out a pitcher and added the appropriate amounts of the ingredients: a Spanish dry red wine, sugar, brandy, cointreau, lemon-flavored vodka, sliced lemon, sliced orange, sliced lime, diced pear, peeled pitted and sliced peach, slice strawberries and a bottle of sprite. It had taken him awhile to figure out exactly how much of everything and what out of everything he'd wanted to add but this recipe had become his usual for sangria. He hadn't made it in a long time. He was pretty sure he'd never made it for Lara either so that was a plus. Once it was all mixed, he stowed it in the fridge and then went onto the next item.
He wound up with a couple of light dishes first including fried sliced artichokes with lemon and light sea salt, three kinds of salsa (mango salsa, pico de gallo and salsa verde), each in its own large scooped out tomato bowl, green gazpacho (full of lettuce, spinach, scallions, sour cream and such) and some homemade nacho chips for the salsa made from cut and seasoned tortillas. And then he went on to the finishing up the main dish after making sure the artichokes would stay warm until Lara got in. The main dish was a vegetarian paella. He'd even made sure to use vegetarian broth/stock instead of chicken stock for that and the gazpacho. He liked regular paella a lot but Lara didn't eat seafood either so vegetarian was the way to go, obviously.
For the paella, without seafood, he used short grain rice, olive oil, minced garlic, chopped yellow onion, the aforementioned vegetable broth, skinned seeded and chopped tomatoes, red, green and yellow bell peppers cut into thin strips, green peas, artichoke hearts and lemon wedges. To say the apartment, and possibly the hallway, smelled awesome was an understatement. While that was cooking he'd manage to make a lemon sorbet too that was setting up in the freezer. He'd even dropped a few things here or there for Slate to eat since the kitten was begging so much. By the time Lara arrived, Stone was setting out the light dishes on the dining room table since he'd timed the paella to give it time to cook still so they could drink, eat the light stuff and chill for awhile before digging into the main dish. He'd set out the salsas, artichokes, nacho chips and small gazpacho bowls and then gathered some large wine glasses and poured out the sangria, making sure to put appropriate fruit...slices or pieces in the glasses to make them look all fancy. What? He liked food...